


drenched in love

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Accidental Kissing, Boys Being Boys, Driving, First Kiss, Kissing in the Rain, Light Angst, M/M, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5543108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan is there to break his fall in the most unconventional way. </p>
<p>(Or my favourite boys being losers in the rain)</p>
            </blockquote>





	drenched in love

**Author's Note:**

> This is very quick and not very well edited, so I apologise for that. I just liked the idea, and I hope you do to. Thanks for reading!

Sometimes, there’s nothing to do but sit back and wait for the rain to stop. 

It’s not natural weather. There’s something unearthly about it. This feels like fury, pure and unadulterated, raining from the sky and scorching the ground like acid spilled over thin skin. It feels like an omen, like an ending, a downpour of rage. 

Adam sits at his makeshift desk, which is really just a cardboard box full of textbooks, with a pin-board balanced on top of it, and stares out of the window. Rain lashes at the pane and the sky is blacker than a bruise. It’s the only sound, this fierce patter of rain hitting the glass. Everything else is quiet. 

His home is cold. Not that he really thinks of it as home, but what else do you call a place like this? Sometimes, he catches himself thinking warmly of the trailer park, of the familiar patchy grass and the cot tucked away in the corner of his room, small and dark. Then the guilt hits him and he pushes those memories away, because you’re not supposed to miss a place that left you feeling so afraid all of the time. He wishes it weren’t human nature, missing things that you shouldn’t. 

But it is a part of human nature, and this place is his home now. It’s all he has left when he’s exhausted and drained. If he goes to Montmouth, he goes to Gansey and his jovial smile and his quiet, anxious tiredness, and his boisterous laugh and his excitement for the world. If Adam goes to 300 Fox Way, he goes to the ghost of Persephone, goes to Calla with her sharp nails and sharper eyes, goes to Maura and her Grey Man, the psychic and the assassin, better parents than Adam’s ever were. He goes to Blue and her fierceness, her strength, her love for her Raven Boys, love that he feels unworthy of. He goes to her glances at Gansey. 

Adam taps a pencil against the set of math problems in front of him. He has one sheet of paper for the workings out, for the scribbles and doodles. There are pictures of trees in the margins, sketches of strange flowers in the corners, Cabeswater bleeding out onto the paper. He works through another problem and pencil in another answer. Then he looks up and stares at the rain, and the cold wraps around him and he shivers, tired, but unwilling to sleep just yet. 

A loud bang on the door startles Adam. He jumps and his elbow collides with a pot and dozens of paper clips cascade onto the floor, making a bid for freedom. He listens to them finding their way between the cracks in the creaky floorboards, making themselves at home there, and he sighs and rights the empty pot. The banging starts up again, impatient and loud, and Adam knows who it is before he’s even out of his seat. 

“You could have just come in,” Adam says, yanking the door open, “like you normally do, you know?” 

He trails off. 

Ronan is there, hand still raised as if to knock, like Adam knew he would be, but for some reason he failed to combine the rain with Ronan, and the miscalculation has resulted in something that he does not know what to do with. 

Ronan is drenched to the bone. His black t-shirt is made thinner by the rain, the fabric clinging wetly to all the sharp planes of his body. It kisses his collarbone and the hem is rucked up, caught on his hip. Adam’s gaze catches there too, sticking to the waistband of his jeans, which sit low, weighed down and emphasising every curve and hilt. 

He doesn’t look like someone you’d find in a church. 

Adam blinks dumbly. The rain is louder now, like white noise in his ears. 

“Hurry the fuck up, Parrish,” Ronan snaps, shaking his head. “I’m freezing my balls off out here.”

There’s water on his cheeks and in the short lines of hair. Droplets gather at his jawline; Adam wants to lick them away. 

It’s that last thought that jolts Adam out of his trance. Blushing brightly, he stumbles back from the door and sweeps an arm out clumsily to gesture Ronan in. Ronan raises an eyebrow and Adam gets stuck looking at his eyes. His lashes are long and dark. Water hugs them. 

“You’re being stranger than usual, Parrish, and that’s saying something.” 

His usual disparaging tone is in place, but there’s something in his voice that suggests that he knows where Adam’s mind is. Adam watches him shift back and forth on his feet. He can’t work out if it’s out of impatience or awkwardness, but eventually Ronan wanders into the room. Adam pushes the door shut behind him and turns to face the other boy, crossing his arms defensively over his chest. 

“Got a towel?” Ronan asks, casually swiping up Adam’s homework with damp fingertips. He traces a line of ivy around Adam’s name and Adam groans and moves to snatch it off of him, but Ronan dances back out of the way. 

“Number four’s incorrect,” Ronan says carelessly, before he drops the paper back on the desk. It skids off the edge and slithers onto the floor. 

“What do you want, Lynch?” 

Adam is too tired to fight. He’s too tired to fix his homework and he’s too tired to have a decent conversation and he’s entirely too tired to sneak past all of Ronan’s barriers, his razor-sharp wit, and find whatever’s really there waiting to be discovered. He’s worked overtime this week, even by his standards and battled with two exams, and he’s tired. But now Ronan is here, dripping all over the floor and his eyes are calculating as they sweep over Adam’s somewhat dishevelled form, taking in the oversized grey sweater and the black sweatpants that have seen better days. His gaze lingers on Adam’s fists, which are loosely clenched, and on his hair, which is ruffled from running his hands through it. 

“First, I want a towel,” Ronan says, and his voice is much dryer than the rest of him. 

“I don’t have any,” Adam lies blatantly. 

Ronan narrows his eyes at him. “Then, I need a driving buddy. Someone there to ensure that I don’t crash into the nearest wall. You’re free.” 

Adam rubs at his heavy eyes and fixes Ronan with a slightly glazed stare. He gets side-tracked again, watching the way that Ronan swipes rain off of his top lip, the way his thumb grazes the bottom lip, dragging along the swell of it. Adam wonders vaguely what would happen if he copied the movement with his tongue. 

And then Ronan is clicking his fingers in Adam’s face, an odd smirk in place. 

“I was about to go to bed,” Adam says, ignoring the look that Ronan aims at Adam’s homework. 

“You can sleep in the car,” Ronan says, and then he’s storming towards the door and yanking it open and then he’s turning around and raising an eyebrow at Adam as if to say well, what are you waiting for?

Adam could say no. He could turn around and pick up the fallen paperclips, secure himself at his desk and solve math problems until he falls asleep there. He could wake up in the morning with the open page of his textbook pasted to his cheek and the knowledge that he did as much as he could last night souring his mind. 

Or he could drown in the rain with Ronan. 

He stops to pull a pair of ratty sneakers over his socks and then grabs at his keys. Ronan’s smile is wickedly sharp and he barrels down the staircase with all the subtlety of a bullet before Adam even has his foot through the door. The lock clicks into place and Adam follows Ronan down into St Agnes. 

Adam pauses at the mouth of the church, expression curdling as he looks out into the waiting night. There’s so much water that Adam can’t separate the darkness from the rain, and there’s nothing reassuring in Ronan’s pleased smirk. 

“C’mon, the car’s not far,” Ronan says, and then he ducks out from beneath the overhand of the church roof. Ronan crows loudly as the rain slams into him, and Adam watches him disappear, hearing only the splash as Ronan kicks up water, racing across the darkened car park. Adam takes a deep, frustrated breath and exhales sharply. He hears Ronan yell again, elated, and follows him out. 

Adam will always follow Ronan. 

The rain is warm and seems to hiss as it touches his skin. The breeze is cool, though, whipped up into a frenzy by the raging sky, forcing it to howl in Adam’s good ear. Adam ducks his chin down into the collar of his jumper and runs, his grip-less shoes skidding on the wet tarmac. He almost runs into the nose of the BMW. It’s so dark that he can’t see it waiting there in the gloom, poised sleekly, so dark that he doesn’t know how Ronan plans to drive it. The other boy thrives on adrenaline, though, so Adam isn’t surprised to find him already behind the wheel, eyes dark and knuckles white. 

Adam clambers into the passenger seat and shakes his head, scattering water droplets everywhere. 

“How the hell do you plan on driving this thing?” Adam asked, peering out of the windscreen. “You’re going to wrap us around a tree.” 

He shivers, the cold seeping beneath his skin, and rubs his fingers together. His hands aren’t as callused and raw as they had been, not now that he has Ronan’s hand cream. It works beautifully, but Adam hasn’t told Ronan that. Ronan glances at him and then cranks up the heating. Hot air blows over Adam’s fingers and he sighs gratefully. 

“So?” he asks again. “How are you going to avoid crashing? I’m too tired for a trip to the hospital.” 

Ronan smirks. The engine roars to life. “Have a little faith, Parrish.” 

They don’t go far. Ronan steers them down a lane that looks familiar, even in the dark. Adam isn’t likely to forget the night that they dug up their friend’s bones and buried them elsewhere. Adam stares out of the passenger window at the dark sky. He can’t see the stars. 

“What are we doing here? The ley line feels fine.” 

Ronan doesn’t look at him oddly, or comment on the fact that Adam can feel the hum of the earth, sense the veins that run beneath the surface of the world, rich with wonder. “Noah wouldn’t leave me alone, whining about there being something wrong. ‘Said he couldn’t stay visible for very long.” 

“You think something’s happened to his grave?” Adam deduces. He stares at the door handle, reluctant to open it and subject himself to the cold, grim weather. The sky has only gotten angrier during their drive. 

“I think it’s a definite possibility,” Ronan says, twisting his keys in his fingers. Then he turns and smirks at Adam. “He looked pretty pale.” 

Adam coughs out a laugh. “He’s Noah. He was probably born translucent.” 

Ronan shoulders open the door and his snicker is lost in the rain. The ground is soft and waterlogged, a veritable swamp that hugs Adam’s shoes. He can feel icy cold water and mud seeping into the holes in his shoes. Adam almost slips as he starts the trek across his grass after Ronan’s slim, rapidly-disappearing figure. Ronan barely pauses for breath, easily navigating the slopes and dimples in the ground. Adam wonders if maybe Ronan visits here often, on the nights when he can’t sleep but Gansey can. He pictures Ronan sprawled out on a smooth stone, rolling a bottle of something strong between his fingers, eyes hazy with the potential for dreams. 

“There it is,” Ronan says loudly, coming to a stop up ahead. His words are tossed about by the wind and Adam has to strain to hear them. He curses as he feels his foot collide with something hard, and then suddenly he’s weightless and falling, arms too slow with fatigue to catch himself. The ground tilts beneath his feet and the floor comes up to meet him and then there’s a hand on his arm, hauling him upright. 

Adam blinks up at Ronan. He’s much closer than he should be, much closer than he was a few seconds ago. Adam thinks he must have moved like lightening, ruthlessly intent on his destination, and not for the first time does he think that there’s something otherworldly about this boy. 

His hand is a hot brand around Adam’s forearm, burning even through Adam’s sleeve. Adam shifts awkwardly as Ronan waits silently, and then the shift is too much and he’s tripping forward again. 

But Ronan is there to break his fall in the most unconventional way. 

His jaw is hard and unyielding beneath Adam’s mouth, but his skin is damp and soft. For a split second, Adam doesn’t move, lips sliding over Ronan’s skin, and they both stay there, caught up in this moment. And then the moment is over and Ronan is jerking away, hands falling away from Adam’s arms. Adam misses the heat of them almost immediately.

Ronan’s face is impossibly pale and his dark eyes are wide and stunned. Adam looks at his jaw, where his mouth just was, and then his gaze dips down and he sees the way Ronan’s pulse is racing and he feels the same reaction in his own chest. His hair is plastered to his forehead and Adam pushes it away impatiently, but by the time his hand drops down Ronan’s face is smoothly impassive, as if nothing had happened. 

Adam stutters out something, an attempt at an apology, but Ronan is already waving a dismissive hand. 

“Watch where you’re going,” Roan sneers, but his heart isn’t in it and his mouth is too softly surprised to be anything but contemplative. As if he can sense that Adam knows this, he whips around and stalks towards Noah’s grave, leaving Adam with a racing heart and a revelation that's all the more surprising because it _doesn't surprise him._

He wants to do that again.

**Author's Note:**

> How did I do? Thanks so much! Adam is such a nerd. So is Ronan. They're both big nerdy nerds in love.


End file.
